Rolling out audio overviews at NotebookLM today. So excited for this one. Take any collection of sources and automatically generate a "deep dive" audio conversation. I created one based on the text of my book The Infernal Machine. Have a listen. 🧵below

Audio overviews are part of the suite of tools we call Notebook Guide, designed to help you understand the source material you upload to each notebook. It's simple to convert complex information into different formats to give you a helpful birds-eye-view of the sources.

But we know many people find that they learn and remember better when they listen to an engaging conversation as opposed to reading. And even if you're not an "auditory learner," sometimes you want to be able to listen on the go.

Audio overviews take up to five minutes to generate. There are a number of edit cycles happening to ensure the content is faithful to the source material, engagingly described, and delivered with convincing human intonation. No one wants to listen to two robots in conversation.

In that discussion of Infernal Machine, the AI hosts riff on the major themes and introduce some of the most interesting characters. (Though they do mispronounce Bertillon's name.) It's a remarkably lucid and thorough summary of a 300-page book, entirely generated by software.

Note: While NotebookLM is available in almost 200 countries around the world, and supports dozens of languages, audio overviews are English-only for now.

If you're interested in AI and conversational audio, there's another great experiment at Google called Illuminate, which is currently more focused on scholarly texts. (There's technically a waitlist, but I think it's generally quick to get off it.)

I've tried the 'Audio Overview' feature, and it's mind-blowing 🤯 👏👏 I used my two books as sources, and it generated an incredibly engaging summary. It perfectly captured the essence of my books, including key details, quotes, and even personal insights, leaving listeners wanting more. The books I used were; Recode Your Future: The Product Growth Playbook:

Steven, this is one of those features that I doubt anybody asked for but once they try it, they won't want to give it up. Amazing work. You and your team created some magic. Thank you!

I just tried an unfinished book! Wild..It gave me the courage to finally finish editing and publish it

Also just tried it. AMAZING. I had to call my wife and play a section to her!!